A Bronx bodega worker who allegedly shot an armed robber with a gun he “found” in the store’s bathroom is facing criminal charges — but advocates are calling him a hero.
Jhonny Gomez Cordero, 56, was manning the counter at his Melrose bodega on Nov. 28 when a pair of masked and armed bandits allegedly stormed in to rob the place — only to have one of them get shot in the foot with a gun Cordero claims he stumbled into in the bathroom earlier.
Cops said the gun is illegal and hit Cordero with weapons charges, while supporters call it self-defense.
“We’re going to fight those charges,” Fernando Mateo, a rep for United Bodegas of America, said at a press conference Wednesday. “And we’re going to make sure that Jhonny Gomez is a free man and he’s not charged with anything criminal.
“Look, he’s got a business to run,” Mateo said. “He’s got four kids to support. He’s got a wife. He’s got a church. You know, this is a man of Christ. A man of God, a man, a hard-working individual.”
According to a criminal complaint, the security camera at Mi Gerizin Market captured the action.
“Defendant pointed a firearm towards an individual known to the New York City Police Department and discharged such firearm,” the complaint said. “Deponent states that upon reviewing video surveillance, deponent observed one muzzle flash and heard what appeared to be the sound of a firearm.”
The wounded man was hit in the leg and was taken to a local hospital with non-life threatening injuries, according to the document.
Mateo conceded that Cordero had not applied for a pistol permit, but maintains that the small business owner simply came upon the weapon by pure chance.
“When you go into your bodega and you allow everyone to use your bathroom, use your facility, you never know what they’re going to leave in the bathroom,” he said. “And in this particular case someone dropped a gun in the bathroom. And it might have saved the lives of all the people who are in the bodega.
“And it might have saved his life,” Mateo added. “Because if that gun wasn’t there he wouldn’t have been able to defend the people in the bodega.”
The incident is just the latest example of bloodshed at Big Apple bodegas.
Among the most notable was the July 1, 2022, fatal stabbing at a Manhattan bodega that temporarily led to murder charges against store clerk Jose Alba.
Alba stabbed and killed 35-year-old Austin Simon after the younger and larger man stormed behind the counter and cornered the clerk, at one point shoving him hard into a shelf.
Manhattan prosecutors later dropped the charges against Alba, ruling the incident self-defense.
In July of this year, a bodega worker in Rego Park, Queens, was taken into custody after a man was fatally stabbed during a fight over beer at a Queens Boulevard min mart.
Police later revealed that the victim, Dylan Marino, 21, tried to strangle the bodega worker from behind after he tried to walk out of the store without paying.
In October, 29-year-old Bronx mom Gwendolyn Guyton was stabbed to death by another woman inside a bodega on Southern Boulevard, with Guyton stabbed in the neck and torso multiple times.